If life in N. Korea is anything like this book makes it seem ... it sucks worse than imagined. Not sure I enjoyed the writing"," though. Skipped around a bit .. hard to follow ... didn't really understand the main character. ( )

It's an unlikely place for an American to set a novel, North Korea. How to write about life in The Hermit Kingdom, a place well known for being bizarrely strange and unknown to outsiders. I'd read one novel set there before, albeit before the partition of Korea: Chaim Potok's I Am the Clay, based I believe on Potok's experience as a chaplain in the Korean War. It was a grim, depressing, joyless novel. Now we have a few accounts of what life in the North is like from defectors who managed to escape it, and we have satellite photos of the prison camps that swallow whole families and of the utter darkness of the country at night due to the absence of electricity. In the acknowledgements page Adam Johnson thanks those who accompanied him on his travels in North Korea, so he's one of the few to have a first-hand sight of the place as well, abridged though that sight may be.

While I know North Koreans must be as full of the normal human drives and impulses and attitudes as humans anywhere, it's hard to shake the image of conformist drones performing in the Mass Games, or of brainwashed cultists sobbing at news of Kim Il-Sung's death. One of Johnson's triumps in this novel, for me anyway, is restoring to North Koreans their individuality. These characters are people like people anywhere, most of them people the reader can empathize with, though their actions and behaviors are truly and bizarrely warped by the monstrous society they live in.

The story is incredible, and incredibly riveting and entertaining. This is not a joyless novel. Jun Do grows up in a provincial orphanage, we later learn because his mother was taken by the squads that scour the countryside to transport pretty young women to the capital Pyongyang. He enters the army and is plucked to join a team that kidnaps Japanese citizens. From there he is taught English and sent to join the crew of a fishing vessel, where he is to listen to communications being sent by Americans. When a shipmate sets off on a defection attempt, the crew invents a story of a dastardly American sneak-attack in an effort to avoid all being sent to prison camps with their families, which involves Jun Do volunteering his arm to a shark attack. The story is deemed useful by the authorities, and Jun Do is whisked to Texas to tell it and show off his injuries as part of a quixotic diplomatic mission.

On his return, he is thrown into a prison camp. Having been to America, he is now a corrupted and unredeemable citizen, nevermind his brief hero status. And then suddenly the novels begins a new section: Jun Do is now the new Commander Ga, Minister of Prison Mines, married to national actress Sun Moon, and confidante of the Dear Leader... for, he knows all too well, only as long as he is useful. How on earth did this happen? The second half of the novel gradually reveals the story, the climax at a Pyongyang airport with the Dear Leader and an American cargo plane, and the denouement with Jun Do/Commander Ga tortured and questioned.

It's a brilliant story, and sheds new and fascinating light on that bizarre nation of North Korea. And now I'm exceedingly curious about how Adam Johnson managed to travel around North Korea, whose leaders, if they read this novel, certainly won't be happy. ( )

I forced myself to read until page 260 of 443. I hated every minute I spent reading this book. I really, really do not understand the hype.

I found the characters unsympathetic, the story muddled and reading it was not at all enjoyable. I have too many other books in my TBR pile to continue with this.

What am I missing?

Disturbing, disorienting, superb. To quote The Decemberists' popular song:

"This is why, why we fight, why we lie awake
This is why, this is why we fight
When we die we will die with our arms unbound
This is why, this is why we fight"

( )

Story: 4.5 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 10
Prose: 7

I wonder if this is the last book I'll read. Seems like I read only bad books. Should I stop reading, move to comic books, or only read authors I already like? ( )